So you want to burp on demand. Perhaps you want to release gas from your digestive tract, or perhaps you just want to get a few laughs. Whatever the reason, the trick is a simple muscular twitch: train yourself to swallow air, then expel it as a burp in one smooth motion. Consider drinking carbonated beverages to help build pressure in your stomach.

Steps

Part 1

Swallowing Air

1

Keep your back upright. Sitting or standing with your back straight ensures that your lungs are fully extended. Extending your lungs will allow you to push out more air, which will encourage burping as you exhale. Trying puffing out your chest as you exhale – this, too, may stretch your lungs and help the burps come more naturally.[1]

2

Drink a carbonated beverage to build up gas in your stomach. Carbonated drinks may include soda, kombucha, ginger ale, and mineral water. Carbonation essentially means that a drink is swirling with tiny air bubbles; thus, drinking soda is somewhat akin to swallowing air. A short time after drinking a carbonated beverage, air will build up in your stomach. This air must be expelled as gas in the form of a burp. You may need to wait a few minutes for the carbonation to take effect.

In this way, drinking a carbonate beverage can help calm an upset stomach. The air bubbles in a carbonated drink will rise up and churn against the walls of your stomach, triggering an uncomfortable distended feeling and making you feel like you need to burp. When you burp, you will relieve excess gas buildup in the digestive tract.[2]

Try drinking out of a can or bottle—rather than out of, say, a straw—to coax additional air to seep in as you drink.

3

Swallow air. When you swallow air, your stomach needs to expel it as gas. If you practice the proper technique, you can learn to channel this gas into a mighty burp.[3] You should be able to feel the pressure building at the bottom of your throat.

If you have a hard time swallowing air, try closing your mouth and pinching your nose shut. This may make it easier to intensively swallow the air that's trapped in your mouth.

Part 2

Burping to Release Air

1

Burp. Once you have built up enough gas pressure in your stomach, you should be able to push it out as a burp. When you feel gas in your esophagus rising toward your throat, open your mouth and allow the air to escape from the back of your throat. Try moving your jaw up and down to create a bit of suction. You may need to move your head and mouth around to perfectly situate your jaw.[4]

The more air you swallow, the bigger the burp will be. Try to burp a couple of times to get as much air out as possible.

2

Learn to burp in one smooth motion. Try to swallow air, then push it back out as a burp, all in one motion. Over time, you will learn to intentionally spasm your throat muscles into a smooth swallow-burp motion.

3

Try swallowing a lot of air, at first, until you effectively force yourself to burp. Keep practicing the swallowing motion. You will feel the pressure building up in your stomach as the air collects and balloons. Eventually, you will feel an overwhelming urge to burp. Follow the urge, and feel yourself twitch your throat muscles to force the burp out. This is what it feels like to burp on demand.

As you get better at burping on demand, the process will become easier and much less painful. You won't need to swallow nearly as much air to generate a solid burp. Keep practicing, and you'll get there.

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Tips

If you have trouble "swallowing" air, try to breathe in then close your windpipe or throat, but keep trying to breathe in hard and some air will slip into your esophagus—try thinking of it as drinking a lot of water and taking a deep breath to swallow it all down.

If you don't like carbonated beverages, you can drink anything you like as long as you let a lot of air in as you drink.

Sometimes puffing out or sucking in your stomach as you breathe out will help you burp.

Burping on demand takes practice. Keep at it, though, and you'll be burping on demand in no time.

Put a little water in your mouth and swallow with your mouth open twice then gargle water with your mouth open and swallow.

Try not to burp excessively as you can pull your muscle(s) in doing so.

Warnings

If you burp intentionally for too long in one sitting, you might get a little sick to your stomach.

You may not expel all swallowed air as a burp, so excess air may be expelled as flatulence.[5]